385452 - Use "website" instead of "web site" or "site" in UI

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 685302

(Core :: Internationalization: Localization, defect)

Description

[Robert Kaiser]

Across several parts of Mozilla UI, we're inconsistently using the phrases "website" vs. "web site" vs. "site", the first two of which are surely the same in meaning, and users don't understand the difference between "website" and "site" at all, if there is even one implied in our strings (which I doubt in most cases).

We should consistently use one of those three variants across all our UI strings.

As I believe that "website" is probably the best choice (IMHO best understood by users), the URL of this bug should list all cases where we use "site" alone.

Comment 1

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

When I did the prefpane re-org for Firefox 2 I also noticed that we use "page" every now and again. I tried to make it such that:

 page = specific URI
 site = group/set of URIs (often used for TLD-bound preferences)

But yeah, we should probably stick to "web site" or "website" or "site". Which one, though? :)

Google says ..:

"website":  about 851,000,000
"web site": about 1,710,000,000

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website#Spelling) says that most dictionaries disagree, but the venerable OED says "website".

Also, little food for thought: I find that "these sites" sounds better than "these websites", yet "The popular website" sounds better than "the popular site". To my ear, I think it's a matter of context. If I'm in a web browser, then I don't think shorthanding to "sites" is a problem. When I'm introducing topics to people without the direct context of a web browser, though, "site" isn't specific enough.

cc'ing madhava and alex, as they're likely to have opinions!

Comment 2

[Robert Kaiser]

I'm concerned a lot about those strings that are in the general platform code that is used outside of browsers as well. Additionally, localizers should not need to find three words for describing three variants of what we believe to be bascially the same anyways.
"Page" vs. "website" is probably a useful distinction in most cases, but "website" vs. "web site" vs. "site" probably isn't ;-)

It's sometimes hard enough for a localizers to preserve the "page" vs. "website" distinction, e.g. in German "page" means "Seite" but "(web)site" has no direct translation, and the in technical jargon "site" is often used but sounds very similar to "Seite" itself (just FYI).

Comment 3

[Damon Sicore (:damons)]

Minusing because this isn't an sg:, crasher, or dataloss issue.  

Comment 4

[Robert Kaiser]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website#Spelling also gives no clear conclusion of what is the preferred spelling.

Comment 5

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

http://mashable.com/2010/04/16/ap-stylebook-website/
http://twitter.com/APStylebook/status/12296505018

Comment 6

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Limi: we were talking about doing an overhaul of strings for consistency ...

Comment 7

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Agreed, let's use "website" everywhere. AP Stylebook is pretty good about having a good balance of what's actually in use, and what reads/looks good.

Comment 8

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Using just "site" seems to work pretty well in situations where the name/action would otherwise be longer.  For instance the "site identity block" instead of "website identity block."  Or the secondary geolocation action "always share my location with this site."

Comment 9

[Robert Kaiser]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Using just "site" seems to work pretty well in situations where the name/action
> would otherwise be longer.

The problem there is that common users probably relate the word "site" to any place or location, while "website" has a clearer definition, even for them. Advanced users probably can imply more easily that we mean "website" when stating "site", but those with less technical clue probably don't.
Also, 3 letters more don't really soundthat significant in a label with already 19 or even 40 characters like in your examples, IMHO.

I already did this change across the board in SeaMonkey and I didn't see us really running into any problems with label lengths.

Comment 10

[:Margaret Leibovic]

This is fixed in bug 685302.